Inside physician engagement: Making daily burdens feel survivable

Bill Heller, chief operating officer at CHG Healthcare, digs into the day-to-day pressures physicians say weigh heaviest on their work: documentation, administrative tasks and chronic understaffing.

The 2025 Physician Sentiment Survey found that nearly half of physicians spend more than 15 hours a week on paperwork, while more than a third cite staffing shortages as a constant strain. Many of those pressures sit outside a physician’s direct control, especially in smaller and midsized practices where budgets and hiring decisions are centralized.

What stood out among highly engaged physicians wasn’t the absence of these problems, Heller says, but how leaders responded to them. Physicians reported that sincere acknowledgment of the burden, transparency about what is being worked on and clear road maps for improvement made those pressures feel more manageable.

Highly engaged organizations also made deliberate choices about how physicians spend their time. Rather than pulling clinicians into unnecessary meetings or bureaucratic processes, leaders focused on involving them where their input mattered most and reducing low-value obligations. Even small structural changes, such as having one physician represent a group instead of many, helped restore a sense of respect for physicians’ time.

Heller also flags the growing role of artificial intelligence as part of the long-term conversation — not as a cure-all, but as one potential tool that leaders must approach thoughtfully, with physicians involved from the start.